Posted 8 months ago on July 15, 2014, 2:55 p.m. EST by shoozTroll
(17632)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Lest we forget.

What Citizen Koch, forgot to stress.

A MAJOR source of corruption in politics

"Exclusive: The documentary, “Citizen Koch,” was deemed unfit for PBS as the network sidles up to David Koch’s wealth, but the film’s weakness actually is that it doesn’t focus enough on how the Koch brothers have corrupted the U.S. political process, writes Jim DiEugenio."

"We suspected it all along, but now we have the goods that prove that Charles Koch was a member of the John Birch Society at the height of their attacks on the civil rights movement and civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King.

In the early 1960s Charles moved back to Wichita and followed in the footsteps of his dad Fred Koch who helped found the John Birch Society in 1958. We broke the story on DemocracyNow!, provided detailed excerpts of the anti-civil rights agenda, and launched a new wiki resource called Koch Exposed (of course). Our new Koch wiki follows the Koch network and the complicated Koch money trail that the brothers use to hide their fingerprints. There are dozens of articles up now on the wiki and dozens more in the works."

"Oscar-nominated filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin were steeped in the production of a documentary on the influence of money in politics, but it wasn't until funding for their project was unceremoniously yanked last year that the power of big donors truly hit home.

The pair had received a $150,000 commitment from the Independent Television Service (ITVS), a Corporation for Public Broadcasting-funded organization that bankrolls projects aired on PBS. They would later learn that their film, Citizen Koch, which explores the post-Citizen United political landscape and the rise of the tea party, had touched a nerve among public television officials worried about angering a generous benefactor, David Koch, who served on the boards of Boston's WGBH and New York City's WNET. In the fall of 2012, PBS had aired Alex Gibney's Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, which featured a highly unflattering portrait of the billionaire, including an interview with a former doorman at Koch's elite Manhattan apartment building who singled him out as its most miserly resident. Public television officials were sensitive about offending Koch again."